No, smoking is a personal wish – The No Smoking review

“I am never going to quit smoking. Only those people quit, who cannot hold on to anything…”

Everything about this movie is rather Kafkaesque. First you have the protagonist named K, (JUST K), reminiscent of Franz Kafka’s eternal fate struck hero, and then you have flashes from the author’s The Trial, with people looking all over K, silent, yet their eyes reveal the fate of the character, something that K does not know already.

And what is his only problem in the whole equation? The only reason that he has to roam the streets of Mumbai as a culprit, the only reason why he has to leave a restaurant during dinner time with all his friends and family, is that of his addiction to cigarettes. He is treated like a stranger in a congregation of men, a social outcast.

And though, admittedly, K is a bit of an ass, as one might put it, the result of his actions are also made according to some very rash decisions regarding him. For instance, while he is in the lift with the old woman and she asks him to stop smoking, K stops the lift and asks her to take the stairs. Now that may seem to be a rather devilish attitude, but the crux of the story lies in the fact that it is always the smoker who is asked to leave from a gathering. If there is a recommendation to make non-smoking chambers and areas, where do the smokers go? Should there also not be a kind of place demarcated for their use? Somewhere, where they do not have to feel like criminals?

And the introduction of the Prayogshala, run by his Holiness, Baba Shri Shri Bangali, Sealdah wale, reminds us again of Kafka’s dilemma, the Nazi party. Like K rightly remarks downstairs, (yes, that’s where his holiness holds his discourses, under the portals of the earth’s limits, very close to the core of the earth – where surprisingly, a whole civilization exists) that how would they help him get rid of his cigarette smoking habit, by placing a gun on his head? While Babaji may ward off that with a sinister laugh, the fact remains that soon after he does show him a picture of Hitler and speaks of what a great friend he was at once. And then the entire George Orwell 1984 “Big Brother” syndrome is displayed. Every action that he has ever committed is recorded by the rehabilitation center. There is a very surrealistic setting created deep down in the gutters of the earth. And K feels the brunt of it. The consequences of smoking are listed to him –

1) The first cigarette that he smokes will find his brother in a room full of smoke, a cumulative smoke capacity of all that K has ever smoked till today – and his brother is known to have only one lung.
2) The second cigarette that he smokes will have two of his fingers chopped.
3) The third cigarette that he smokes will actually kill his wife.
4) The fourth will kill his mother.
5) And the fifth will kill his soul.

Why would anyone touch another cigarette?

But K does. The Kafkaesque hero is not without a cause. He has the right to smoke, as much right as someone has to refuse a smoke. Another surrealistic situation creeps up, wherein K tries to get one ahead of the holy man. He buys tickets of airlines moving away from Mumbai. And from there he chooses any one. Once he lands at his chosen destination, he has someone buy him all the tickets moving away from that place – from where he chooses another ticket and so on. This way, if even he doesn’t know where he is going, how will Baba Bangali?

But the dream still continues. He gets caught in some remote part of Africa, trying to puff away. And he returns, only to find that his brother has indeed been pushed through what was promised. What else can he do now? He has to give up … And yet the story continues!

No Smoking is just not a Kafkaesque movie, but it also is a Fellinisque movie. It uses the same tools of absurdity and meaninglessness, to point out a fact that is crucial and of utmost importance—like the protagonist (the Kafka tool), the director slips from reality to the imaginary within seconds and frames, making it hard to realize the setting of the situation. Does the whole event happen in a dream, or does K actually go through all the afflictions? No one really can be absolutely certain about the fact, not even K.

What makes No Smoking a delight to watch is the treatment of the film and the message that it gives out—smoking is a person’s personal wish and it should be given in with that in mind. When a person starts to smoke, he does it fully aware of the fact that it WILL harm his health and after that the question of policing does not arise. If people want to ban smoking in public places, they also have to reserve corners for smokers to congregate! Nicotine is not a parallel for narcotics and it should therefore not be treated as a kind of social evil. And yet, the point never was about smoking—it was about a person’s inner desire, his personal wish!